Fear. It was the first thing Klein had felt when his heart stopped. It was nothing like he had ever felt, no pain that he had ever experienced crossed it. It was like his head had exploded, and every vein in his body wished to shriek and tear themselves away. His own body raged inside of him, indignant by the stopping of his heart.

  And then it started again. Klein felt it clearly this time, the rough grasp of a hand, as if needles poked him from inside. His breath was taken away from him, and then forcefully returned as blood continued to flow through him.

  Klein only saw glimpses of the three strangers that came upon them, and for a second he had the audacity to entertain the thought that maybe they’d help him. That maybe the pain would end.

  And then the fight began.

  He felt earth shake beneath him, the very air flowed and tossed him around, and the whole world shook as explosions ensued one after another. He heard shouts, and orders flew around. Shrieks of pain as someone got hurt, and in between all of that he felt honks and nasal noises of an animal.

  Slowly in a while, the pain lessened. He didn’t know if the hand around his chest had gotten better at pumping the heart, or he had just grown used to it. He tried to sit up, but his chest still ached with every move, and for some reason it felt heavy.

  He opened his eyes and locked them with a bird. A goose, he corrected. It honked at him, its eyes glittering with the distant feel of intelligence, a collar of red mana around its neck, and it flew into the battle.

  Klein sat there for a second, wondering if he had hit his head and had just imagined a goose. He looked back, into the area where the battle was taking place, and the goose was still there. It was fighting–with magic, he realised, seeing the glowing crimson-pink mana around it–for the masked people.

  Klein stood up, his knees shook and his heart throbbed, but he finally felt good enough to engage in combat again. He looked around, quickly taking in the battlefield.

  Carell was kept busy by one of the enemy mages who kept opening holes under his feet every time he teleported, effectively sealing the help he could give others with his portals or telekinetic hooks.

  Anne was busy fighting her own reflections. Klein blinked, no, they weren’t reflections. They were mirrors. The enemy mage seemed to be capable of creating mirrors, and was using it to hide from Anne and have created a mirror maze around her. Klein had to respect the durability of those creations if they could handle Anne’s consecutive chained explosions.

  Riley was doing the worst of them all, one of the mages and the goose both attacked her. She laid on the ground, unmoving. The meagre earth armour she had around her was already riddled with flaming arrows, cooking her inside.

  Klein ran for her. He didn’t know what help he could really bring, or what he could really do. Even now his heart felt like it’d burst.

  He shouted as he neared her, “Hey asshole! Let’s make it two on two, huh?” Stupid stupid stupid.

  With no delay, or hesitation, Klein saw an arrow heading his way. A flaming arrow. He ducked behind a tree, his heart almost leaping out of his chest, but he held it all in. All of the fear and the pain, he kept it all in, and thought.

  What can I do? He’ll be coming after me.

  He looked around himself, and only saw trees. No, he looked down and their loot laid there, scattered around him. The cold flame flickered above ground, its icy radiance cooled him. It was farther away. The transparent root laid there between him and the flame.

  Wait, why hasn’t he used any other spell since then? Why hasn’t any of them?

  He looked at the others fighting, and it looked like the two fights had merged into one where the enemies tried to contain the duo with holes and mirrors, while Carell tried his best to teleport them outside, or send explosions through his portals.

  Could they perhaps be?

  A plan started to stitch together in his mind, the pieces came slowly, and then much quicker.

  He grabbed the transparent root as he ran from his cover, and a flaming arrow whizzed right past him. He held the fear within him, all of that terror which singed at his scalp with the heat of the arrow, and he ate the root as he covered himself behind another tree.

  The taste of the raw root, still covered in dirt and dust filled his mouth, and he almost vomited, yet continued to chew. He chewed even when his eyes teared, and the juices mixed with his saliva into some abhorrent vomit of a taste.

  And in front of him, slowly slowly, he grew transparent. His figure faded away, taking his clothes with it.

  Klein closed his eyes, and felt everything happening to him. He felt the horror eat away at him, the mage closing on him from behind–cautious of his unpredictability–and the honk of a goose. He didn’t know why, but it felt very reminiscent of a cry.

  Klein ran again. His steps suddenly were too heavy on his very ears. He looked at the enemy, and it hadn’t noticed him. That’s good. Good.

  He ran for the cold flame, when something changed. His step slipped, and Klein came to a skidding halt. He looked back, the mage looked in his direction and the goose glowed and honked in indignation. Indignation?

  Then a flaming arrow came for him, and Klein got away as fast as he could. The arrow exploded around the area he had just been at.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He can’t see me, good.

  A branch fell on him at that instant, blown away by the explosions happening away, it had flown directly at him. Klein clutched his head, stared at the branch with venom and quickly hid behind another tree. He had just taken cover when the ground gave way under him, covering his feet in mud. The mud wouldn’t vanish.

  What rotten luck, Klein cursed. Something was off.

  He looked at the goose, and it continued to glow. In its own crimson-pink glow. Klein narrowed his eyes at it.

  After another second of realising that he couldn’t do anything about it, he ran again. The flaming arrow now shot directly at him, and in the last second he activated his skill on the outside of his robes.

  Klein tumbled as sharp pain erupted just under his shoulder blades. There was much less heat this time; he thanked the heat reflection part of his skill. The cold flame was just a few inches away from him, and he grasped it even as another arrow struck his back. He grit his teeth, his whole body erupting in pain and anger, and crushed the flame.

  Suddenly like popping a balloon, a wave of cool blasted through the area. The explosions in the distance stopped, and so did the continuing arrows. He looked back, and smiled. The mage was backing away.

  Oh no, you don’t.

  He tried, but the enemy was faster and much more physically fit. Klein, meanwhile, was injured, already huffing, and had his heart in the hands of some ghost. It was already impressive that he could run at all.

  But he also can’t let him get away. Not now.

  He tried to activate his skill–pushing in with all the bits and scraps of his mana–he focused the skill outside his hands. He had never been able to do it beyond his hands, even after all the training and practice, but he wanted to do it today. He needed it. He focused hard, and it felt like his head itself would break, and something seemed to shift inside of him. It was like the world itself became a matrix of points and lines, he looked for the point in the distance. And he activated his skill at that point. The mage and the goose were suddenly engulfed by the soft ground.

  Klein stood up slowly, the world still a matrix around him but it was quickly going away, and something worse was approaching.

  In the distance he could feel shouts of Carell, and realised that they might be getting desperate with the sudden loss of Anne’s ability, but he felt it a little hard to care. His mind reeled with the flickering view of dots and lines.

  The cold would only last for a minute anyway. He shook his head at random thoughts.

  He approached the enemy with a big stone, who still fumbled in the soft ground. Reaching the enemy, he saw them look up at him, or more correctly the shape of the large boulder in his hands, and Klein realised terror when he saw it.

  He lifted the boulder up, and brought it down.

  Crack.

  He lifted it again.

  Crack.

  Again.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  Klein was covered in blood and gore, his eyes distant, as if he had just realised what happened. He let go of the boulder, and looked one last time at the now dead enemy.

  Where’s the goose?

  He looked around, looking for the white figure, but he found it nowhere.

  Did it run away?

  Klein thought that maybe he should care more about letting an enemy go away like that, but he cared not. He had just taken a life, with his own hands. A life which was after his own. Something stirred in his heart.

  What is this feeling?

  He didn’t know what he felt. Was it anger at himself? Joy at surviving? Was it indifference?

  He looked away, in the distance the explosions have returned with even more fervours. The cold had disappeared as well.

  The feeling in his heart returned. The hand holding his heart suddenly pulled him. Klein held back the yell, his lips quivered. He had held hopes that maybe it was a spell cast by one of the mages.

  No. They are stiffers too. What is it? Is there another enemy hiding?

  He struggled in the direction the pull brought him, away from the others, and try as he might, he couldn’t find a single bit of foreign mana inside of him.

  What is happening to me!?

  He realised something was off about everything when he came upon a massive crater in the ground–as if created by a huge explosion–and in there laid a single crystal. The feeling came from it, and so close to it, it felt like the hand would literally crush his heart. He was pulled inside.

  Klein fell and stumbled, scraped himself against rocks and dirt as he rolled near the crystal. It shined with myriad colours, so beautiful that it made him forget all his pain and fear. It looked like a piece of paper, so thin yet so beautiful.

  He carefully brought his hands towards it, protecting it like a candle in the rain, and as soon as he touched it, it melted away. Like a liquid in reverse, it floated in him, through his skin. For a few seconds, nothing happened.

  The next? Klein erupted in pain and yelled.

  #

  “Anne, did you hear that?” Carell took in deep breaths of air as he asked Anne. She laid on the ground, breathing heavily, and beside them the two dismembered bodies of their assailants laid. They had finally managed to portal an explosion just beside them before their mana ran out, and won the fight.

  It wasn’t satisfactory, and it left a bad taste in Carell’s mouth. They had killed. Two people. It was murder, and Carell couldn’t justify it even with the excuse that they were the ones who first attacked him. They were Stiffers, with crowd control abilities. They wouldn’t have been able to kill him, he knew it, and they knew it. But he chose to do it anyway. He could’ve incapacitated them with his telekinetic hooks, but he chose not to.

  “W-what?” Anne wheezed.

  “Someone shouted. I think Klein and Riley need our help. We need to go, c’mon quick!” He pulled a grunting Anne off of the ground, and checked his mana pool. He was low. Deadly low. Barely 5%. He hoped that it would be enough to kill the last assailant with all of them together.

  They didn’t have to run for longer before they came upon Riley. Carell’s eyes narrowed, and became pin-point. His lips shook, and he almost lost all semblance of strength in his feet.

  Riley lay there motionless, the cracked earth armour around her showed the gap in her chest.

  She was dead.

  Anne stumbled beside him. He didn’t know if she was hit by the death, or was she just tired. He could never tell for her, nor did he have the mental energy to.

  Klein?

  A bad feeling grasped his heart, and it shook him to the core. No no.

  He ran, he teleported, uncaring about the mana left in his pool, he moved towards the scream. And he came upon a corpse.

  A pit dissolved in his gut when he realised the dismembered corpse wasn’t of Klein. It was the assailant, dead. Head bashed in, it was dead.

  Did he do it?

  He left the body to look for his friend. Eventually he came across a huge crater, and the same feeling of dread filled him when he had seen the corpse of Riley. He rushed towards it.

  In the centre of the crater laid Klein, motionless.

  Carell teleported directly beside his friend, and checked his pulse. He sighed in relief. Every muscle in his body suddenly relaxed, and Carell teared up.

  #